Taliban condemn US drone attack in Kabul that killed al-Qaeda leader
Kabul, Aug 2 (EFE).- The Taliban government on Tuesday condemned the United States drone attack in Kabul that killed al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri during the weekend.
The Taliban, without referring to one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, claimed the US attack was in violation of the Doha agreement between the two nations.
The Taliban government “strongly condemns this attack, for whatever reason it took place and considers it a clear violation of international law and the Doha Agreement,” the Islamist government’s chief spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid said in a statement.
Such attacks “repeat the failed experience of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the United States, Afghanistan, and the region. Repeating such actions will damage the available opportunities” of bringing stability to the region, he added.
On the Doha agreement signed in February 2020 between the US and the Taliban, Washington agreed to the complete withdrawal of its forces from the Asian country bringing an end to two decades of conflict that ended a year ago after the Islamists took Kabul.
However, the US agreed to the pullout under the condition, among other things, that Afghanistan would not be used as a haven for terrorists like during its previous regime between 1996 and 2001, marked by its support for Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 attacks.
This condition is something that the Taliban apparently failed to comply with.
But the Islamists avoided referring to the target of the attack, which earlier during the day US President Joe Biden announced was al-Zawahiri, Bin Laden’s successor as al-Qaeda’s head after his death in 2011 in a US operation in Pakistan.
The attack on al-Zawahiri took place on Sunday morning in a residential area of Kabul, and the Afghan Interior Ministry spokesperson Abdul Nafi Tekor, had initially told EFE that there were no casualties and they did not know the origin of the strike.
Only on Tuesday Mujahid revealed that, after an investigation by the Taliban intelligence services, it could be confirmed that it was a bombing by a US drone.
According to the White House, al-Zawahiri, 71, was killed by a drone that fired two Hellfire missiles at him while he was on the balcony of the safehouse he was staying in with his family, and there was no collateral damage.
The al-Qaeda leader had been located after he moved to the Afghan capital with his family earlier this year and that he still constituted a threat to the citizens, interests and national security of the US. EFE
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